A lone English girls' passion for healthy eating, exercising, and living!

Locked Out

I had a terrible afternoon!! You know how I rushed off from my last post to go home? WELL. That took longer than expected.

I had all my stuff packed up and ready (I always bring back a bag with all my food in – ie stuff that goes off – veggies, fruit, milk etc etc or stuff that I’ve bought which I just want to eat – as well as my bag with my purse, phone etc in, laptop bag, workout bag, and bag of books/work), and I was loading it into the car. I had two bags left to get – laptop and books. So I threw the car keys in the car and dashed into the house to grab those last two – BUT:

STUPID MODERN TECHNOLOGY!!

As the keys hit the seat, the electric locker thing went off – so my car keys, phone, purse, and food were all locked in the car :O

Not good! Especially considering that, being in a house of students, we don’t have a landline phone, we all just use our mobiles – it’s far easier to keep track of bills that way. So yeah, I couldn’t get in the car and I had no phone :'(!!

I ended up finding a random man on the street; I asked him basically if he could break into my car for me! He couldn’t (shame, that), but instead tried his own car keys (!?) in the door – oddly enough, they didn’t work.

I needed the number for a car rescue place, but as the car is registered in my mum’s name, I had no idea who my car rescue people were! So I tried phoning my mum at work on this bloke’s mobile – my mum is a counseller and she was with a client….but luckily (for me, not the poor drug addict she was trying to help :s she’s a drug’s therapist) one of her colleagues dragged her out, and she managed to give me the number for the rescue people.

So I waited like, 45mins, then a little fat bald bloke came out and broke into my car for me! PHEW.

I was sooo relieved!! He apologised for scratching the car as he broke in and I was like ‘ I DON’T CARE, THANKYOU!!!!!’ I very nearly hugged the poor guy! Believe me, a few tears were shed today……see I’m prone to panic in situations like that! But being a nice young girl, it can work to my advantage sometimes :p – the first guy who helped me very nearly left, til he saw me getting teary (not on purpose, real tears!)….haha!

In a weird way, it was times like today when I wished I lived somewhere reaaaaally rough, so I could just ask any old randomer if they could break in, and they’d have the means to 😛 damn living near nice, happy pleasant people!

Anyway – that meant my afternoon was thrown a bit – I drove home very fast (and very nearly broke down, the old fuel light was SCREAMING at me to fuel up. I swear Ionly just made it time!! My car was thirsty!!) and arrived just in time to release some frustration in the means of a 13min workout DVD, before cooking my dins. All the rush though meant no afternoon hot chocolate!! Instead, I had an unpictured slice of goat’s cheese and a handful of spinach – twas all I had access to in the car! Interestingly, my lunch held me over for about 2.5hours – not bad!

When I got in, I had a tbsp of grape nuts 😛

Dinner was Tofu Stew!

Well, kinda.

I got a 1/2 can of chopped tomatoes, and added in these spices (& salt & pepper & garlic powder):

lots of soy sauce

about 1tsp cumin

a few shakes of chilli powder

a few squeezes of agave

(This was loosly based on the spice mixture Iowa Girl Eats posted today – except she used sugar instead, and a few other different things I think. Looking back, sugar probably would’ve worked better, and more chilli was needed!)

I let it stew and simmer away for a while while I chopped up some parsnip, garlic and the last of the kabocha, which all went into the oven to be roasted (NO CINNAMON!)

Meanwhile, I softened up a shallot:

And got out a half block of tofu:

I cubed it, then added it in with the onion and some more soy sauce, and stir fried it til it was brown:

While that was going on, I added a 1/2 tin of chickpeas (or garbonzo/garbanzo (sp?) if you’re from across the pond) to the tomato:

Then added in the tofu:

And then the veg:

And then served!

I was hungry and a bit stressed and it hit the spot perfectly 🙂 Plus I’m adoring tofu at the minute! My ultimate way with it I think is still all bbq-y/soy-y with noodles in a stir fry, but this was still really, really good 😀